I have had a bit of time off work this month, but I hadn’t planned anything. So I decided once and for all to make a proper attempt at putting a good webpage up there. The result is this new design.

I used this as an opportunity to experiment with new techniques. This should look pretty good on both mobiles and desktops — though it’s reasonably straightforward here since there is not really much content to speak of. (I am working on making this blog a bit more mobile-friendly in due course.)

I found it fascinating working on this design. It reminded me of when I was first learning about web design a decade ago. For the first time in years, I truly pushed myself to learn new things, and I was hooked on trying to get it all working the way I wanted it to.

But while I found the code a challenge to work on, visually I have taken a simple approach as usual. I drew influence from two sources in particular: Microsoft’s Metro design language and the BBC’s Global Experience Language.

I am a big fan of their less-is-more approach. I have always loved minimalist design, and I have increasingly strived to create designs that are simple and clear. Hopefully I have achieved it here.

The design uses icons from the Wireframe Toolbar Icons set.

It should work fine in all major browsers, although I have noticed a few quirks in Opera Mini, as well as older versions of Internet Explorer. Please let me know if you spot anything unusual.

It is almost as if the circle or sphere has, by stealth, become the standard shape of the web. Because of the sort of person I am, I began to wonder just why this is. After a while, I figured that it was because a circle, or something vaguely spherical, reminds us of a globe, symbolising the ‘world wide’ nature of the web.

None of the logos go out of their way to look like a globe though. The most globe-like is the Firefox logo, and even then it is a made-up map that is mostly obscured by the fox. The Safari logo also features, quite subliminally, part of a world map. But this takes a back seat to the compass.

As many will remember, a globe was a big feature of the Internet Explorer logo about ten years ago. It was the big ‘e’ that rotated to reveal a globe on the other side while a page was loading. But nowadays the only throwback to that is the yellow ring, which looks a bit like an orbital path.

Goodness knows what the Google Chrome logo is actually supposed to be (a gay pride pokéball?). But the spherical nature of it is quite a strong reminder of a globe.

I have been thinking lately about good visual metaphors for the web. I am not particularly keen on the image we currently use in the University of St Andrews web team for the avatar of our Twitter account @stawebteam. I think it looks too much like we are forcing Firefox down people’s throats. The question is how to differentiate our Twitter account from others that use the University crest.

A spider’s web doesn’t work — it is cheesy, laboured and just a bit too obvious. The original world wide web logo (on the right), designed by Tim Berners-Lee’s co-conspirator Robert Cailliau, has not aged well and is not particularly versatile.

Maybe the answer is just to somehow adopt the sphere. What I wonder is if going spherical was a conscious decision on the part of the browser logos’ designers — and it is a sheer coincidence that they have all had the same idea. Or perhaps it is something that sits subconsciously in the back of a designer’s head when thinking about the world wide web.

An alternative theory is that the logos are designed not to look like a globe, but to look like the Internet Explorer logo! While having a look to see if anyone had spotted the trend for browser logos to be circular or spherical, I came across another blog post with more theories as to why.

In the comments there, momentum gathers behind the idea that the other browsers are following what Internet Explorer has done because it has become so ingrained in people’s minds that you click the circular logo to surf the web. I particularly like the first comment from Simon:

People got used to the idea that the icon that goes to the internet is the round, blue one, so other browser-makers followed suit with at least the shape.

In fact, looking at the logos again, I think it goes even further than the shape. Many of the logos feature blue prominently. Even Google Chrome’s multi-coloured logo places a blue sphere centre stage.

Perhaps this is the real reason why Opera has never quite got much of a foothold in the desktop browser market! Its logo is arguably the least spherical, and is the only one of the current major browsers that doesn’t feature any blue.

Hello.

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like.

Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. It is pretty important stuff. But the only mentions of it have been ghettoised in the darkest recesses of the technology sections, cordoned off in yellow and black tape with “warning: geeks only” written on it.

I don’t watch the television much these days, so I might be wrong. But I saw no mention of it on the news. I heard no mention of it on the radio. You certainly don’t hear people talking about it on the streets or in pubs.

You might think, “So what? Security update for X, Y and Z are released every day. You can’t have the news reporting it every day.” But something extra happened with that security update that was released last week: it crippled many users’ computers. Including my parents’ computer.

It is just as well I was still able to use my computer to try and find out what the problem was and how to workaround it. It turned out that ZoneAlarm threw a hissy-fit after Windows XP had updated and prevented users from accessing the internet.

In fairness, the BBC reported this on their website — but that’s not very useful if you’ve got no internet. Perhaps there are still people scratching their head about why they’ve not been able to access the internet for the past week.

The problem is twofold. One, the mainstream media seems quite averse to any technology story unless it’s to do with [say this like a caveman] “GOOGLE” or “APPLE”. Or “GOOGLE”. Simply, if you want to find out anything meaningful about technology you have to really know where to look for it.

And this brings me on to the second part of the problem. The people who don’t know where to look for information are also the most vulnerable users. There are people who, for whatever reason, can’t be motivated to take proactive measures to prevent themselves from the various security issues that inevitably arise when you use the internet.

I have a friend who bought a new computer a few weeks ago. The other day he complained to me that his new computer has already got spyware on it. The thing is that it’s not difficult to protect yourself really.

I’m not really a computer expert in the slightest, but I know the basics of how to protect myself — essentially keep all your software updated with the latest patches and don’t click any dodgy links. I don’t think it’s really a difficult concept. And — touch wood — these basics have worked for me. Since I got my own computer early last year I’ve never had anything worse than a tracking cookie on my computer (as far as I know — I just know that this is an invitation for my computer to explode under the weight of pop-ups tomorrow…).

But even simple measures like these that anyone can take are difficult to get through to some people. So many people still treat computers with awe. It is sometimes easy to forget how foreign computers are to many people.

I remember a couple of years ago when there was a really bad signalling failure on the train line into Edinburgh. Basically every train was cancelled. An old lady pointed to the automated departure monitor and asked why it said a list of trains towards the bottom of the screen were still listed as being on time.

This is what she said in protest (as though it would make her more likely to get on a train to Edinburgh): “I thought computers were wonderful things that never ever went wrong.” But even my basic knowledge of how computers work told me exactly why the trains were still listed as being ‘on time’ — because they hadn’t even departed from their start station, so hadn’t passed any sensors and weren’t technically late at all. The computer was none the wiser for obvious reasons.

This can be put down to the old issue that people in their thirties and younger have been using computers for almost all of their lives and understand what a computer is good for and what it isn’t. Youngsters who have lived with computers all their lives understand how a computer works, but for many people older than that computers just work by magic.

The thing is, that divide between young and old is not so clear cut as I used to think. I was listening to iPM yesterday and there was an interview with Clive Sinclair. He pointed out that back in the 1980s computer users really understood computers because they had to in order to get them to work. Today’s youngsters growing up with computers generally don’t understand computers at all.

So we come back to my friend who is the same age as me and has a problem with spyware. I have had a few conversations with him where I have tried to persuade him to use Firefox. For him, the internet is the internet and he doesn’t understand how one browser can be better than another. Even though I have told him about all the superior features and better security that a browser like Firefox or Opera can provide, he persists on using Internet Exploder version bum point poo.

Many people, through ignorance, don’t take the simple measures to keep themselves safe on the internet. I’ve had a look at the stats for this website to see what bad browsers visitors to this site are using.

In the past month, an amazing 20% of visitors used Internet Explorer 6. This is a web browser that was originally released seven years ago and last updated four years ago. It is notorious for its security problems. The more up-to-date Internet Explorer 7 was released almost two years ago.

You would expect Firefox users to be smarter, right? Not always. In the past month, 243 Firefox users that visited this website were using a version of the browser that is considered unsafe (which I defined as 2.0.0.14 and below). This included 19 people using 1.5.0.12, 11 using 1.0.7 and 8 using 1.5.0.3. Most amazingly, 4 visitors were using Firefox 0.9.1, a browser that has been out of date for four years. I dread to think what kind of security problems these users have been getting themselves in.

It got me wondering. If this many people are using dodgy browsers, how many people are still trying in vain to unsubscribe from spam emails? How many don’t know that even viewing an image in an email alerts a spammer that your email address is active? You could go on.

I don’t mean all this in a preachy kind of way. I completely understand why it is difficult for people to keep up to date with all the security issues that arise. I just find it really frustrating that simple awareness issues are not, well, made aware to people.

Things don’t get much more ubiquitous than the internet. It is impossible to imagine that someone growing up today will not be a regular internet user in some form or another. And there are real dangers on the internet that aren’t to do with [say this like a caveman] “PEDOPHILS” and “CYBER BULLIES”. But the media reports on made-up dangers like “KNIVES” and “YOOFS” and “KNIVES” as though we are on the verge of bladeageddon.

Yesterday I was listening to Digital Planet. They had a chap called Stefan Frei on reporting that around 60% of all internet users are using an out-of-date browser. He had a really smart way of thinking about software security. You should think of software as being perishable, just in the same way as foodstuffs. You wouldn’t eat a mouldy slice of bread, so why would you use a browser with a huge security hole in it?

It’s a really smart analogy that should be spread far and wide. It’s just frustrating that the place I heard it was on Digital Planet, which is probably listened to mainly by people who already know that they should be updating their browsers.

Yeah, there’s that massive oversized analogue clock. And there’s that calendar that doesn’t do anything except tell you what the date is. Then there is the RSS reader that only allows you to subscribe to certain Microsoft feeds. The only really useful one that came as a default on Vista is the post-it note style thing. But apart from that, unless you really like currency converters, there was not much to get stuck into.

There isn’t even anything decent among the third-party efforts. The only good one is iTunes Accessory. Almost all of the others are banal and pointless.

This always struck me as a bit weird. After all, there seem to be a lot of good widgets available for Mac OS X. And even when you look at the wonderful and varied ways that Facebook Applications have been used, the world of Windows Sidebar Gadgets is startlingly stagnant.

But yesterday I discovered a truly useful and surprisingly well-executed Gadget made by National Rail Enquiries. Once you install the gadget, you simply type in your start station (and, optionally, your destination station) and up pops a list of how the trains are running. Essentially, it is the live departure boards feature of the National Rail website, just sitting there in the corner ready for me to glance at.

I already put it to good use yesterday, in my little game of chicken (what’s the latest train I dare to get?). I couldn’t decide which between two trains I should get. But when the earlier one started to run late, I decided I had better stay on the safe side and get the earlier one.

The gadget could do with a couple of extra features. Clicking on a journey brings up a larger screen with details on the expected journey times — but only from your station onwards (eg., I get a table of all the stations between Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh Waverley). But I usually like to see how the train has been running at stations prior to Kirkcaldy to give me a better idea of the journey’s history. I always get the impression that the journey estimates are a little on the optimistic side, and I’d rather like to see the cold, hard facts of how the train has actually been getting along.

But I can’t complain too much. As I said, it is just amazing enough that such a useful gadget has finally been made, and by National Rail Enquiries of all people! I get the feeling that it is going unnoticed (apparently it’s been around since July, and I’ve only just found out about it). If you are a regular train user and have Windows Vista, you probably ought to install it.

A couple of months back, this report appeared in The Guardian and it sounded like it was almost time to give up on waiting for the iPlayer to arrive.

The first announcement of a groundbreaking download service for the BBC came four years ago. Back then it was called the Interactive Media Player, and was one of a number of ambitious projects to push the BBC into the future.

Since then iPlayer has been officially announced at least three times, rebranded twice, trialled several times and seen more than £3m invested in its development. Even then, it was only two weeks ago that the BBC Trust officially sanctioned it.

At last, iPlayer was unveiled to the public this week. I visited the website to register my interest — only to find that I couldn’t. Seemingly, my computer is too new for iPlayer.

To add insult to injury, even if you are not committing the heinous crime of using Vista rather than XP, iPlayer forces you to use Internet Exploder! For many, this is like being asked to insert nails into your eyeballs.

Put it this way. If anyone else had the chutzpah to release software like this, it would have already received a death by flaming from bloggers and Diggers. Perhaps it already has.

I mean, just look at it. You can’t use it on a Mac. You can’t use it on Linux. You can’t even use it on the latest version of Windows. And even if you are lucky enough to be using the correct operating system, you have to be using the right browser.

Even then, this sort of thing happens. Reports of the iPlayer’s shakiness are widespread. Even The Guardian‘s tech boffins apparently found it difficult to get working.

As though to top it off, iPlayer uses discredited DRM-based software to lock the programmes off. That is just the icing on the cake. Even the music industry is starting to give up on DRM.

Let’s face it. iPlayer has been in development for three or four years. It is still in the situation where it dictates which operating systems and browsers you can use. And even then it’s still really flaky.

My guess is that if a service such as, say, Joost launched like this, it would have never recovered from all of the negative publicity. It makes me wonder how the BBC dropped the ball so badly. Their Radio Player is a similar idea but without the pictures, and it works really well (current “severe technical problems” aside). So how come iPlayer is such a botched job?

I was explaining how, sitting here today, it is difficult to see why anyone would want to sign up to a social network that isn’t Facebook.

While MySpace used to be the market leader, it was always far too annoying and buggy to remain on the radar for long. Every time I visit MySpace I just get bombarded with spam. Most friend requests are either from awful bands, fake people or are just plain spam. Visiting MySpace is like wading through a thick, stinking swamp. With pink glittery things in it.

By contrast, I don’t recall ever seeing a single piece of spam on Facebook. Not even a spammy friends request.

As for Bebo, at least you can say they are not just burying their heads in the sand. I never really saw what Bebo had going for it, apart from being slightly less worse than MySpace. But that’s not saying much. They have recently launched a minor redesign, which looks like a desperate attempt to be perceived as Web 2.0.

But Bebo is a pretty tired site now. As I said above, many of the site’s features are now watered-down copies of other websites. Take the “sayings” feature, a recent feature which is a copy of Twitter in every way. Except the Bebo version does not link to your mobile phone, and is generally a bit rubbish.

I guess the “me too” thing is quite clever, but I think it says something about Bebo users if they can’t even think up an original thought. And what is with those Skittles emoticons? Why? They seem immensely popular as well.

My biggest beef with Bebo is the fact that you can’t post a link on your profile. That is the stupidest thing ever. Is not the WWW supposed to be all about links? Even worse, when you just type in a URL, Bebo puts spaces in it to prevent the text from spilling over the narrow columns — so these URLs become broken because of Bebo.

But despite all of these niggles, I don’t think Bebo is in any immediate danger of going south à la MySpace. Bebo attracts a different audience to Facebook. You get a lot more young people there, which you might be able to tell if you clicked the link to the popular sayings above. They won’t be tempted by Facebook at the moment. But what about when they grow up?…

As for LiveJournal… aaah. MatGB’s brilliant post on this matter sums it up (and that was what spurred on many of the thoughts that led to these posts). He thinks LiveJournal is dying, and he is probably right.

The only reason I have a LiveJournal is because I got it years ago, when it was still vaguely popular. One-by-one, my friends that did use it stopped. I can think of only one “real lifer” LJ friend that still posts on LJ. My posting there has slowed to a trickle (once every 2 or 3 months, really) and just about the only person who ever posts comments on my LJ now is MatGB.

When Vox was released, I said that I would probably choose Vox over LJ if I didn’t already have an LJ account. Now it is difficult to think of a website that I would actually prefer to sign up to rather than LJ. Hell, even when MySpace came along, LiveJournal suddenly looked a bit old-hat. Dare I say it’s a Web 1.0 website trying to survive in a Web 2.0 world.

It might be different for me. LiveJournal always seemed to be a bit different. It’s got a community that I just never found myself able to become a part of. For this reason, I reckon LiveJournal will probably keep many of its current users until they die.

But MatGB hit the nail on the head. If you didn’t have a LiveJournal account, why would you sign up for one today? Why would you, when you can sign up to Facebook? Six Apart have pissed off a lot of LJers, and their recent accidental deletion of up to 500 legitimate LiveJournals does little to instil confidence in the people running LiveJournal.

In short, Facebook is in prime position to collect up a huge proportion of the users of social networks. It already attracts all sorts of people who weren’t tempted by MySpace or Bebo. And because of the smart way Facebook has allowed itself to grow, that looks set to continue. At the moment, it is unthinkable that Facebook will drop the ball like Friendster, MySpace and LiveJournal all did.

While the refusal of Facebook to sell out to Yahoo! for $1bn might be seen as arrogance, on the other hand I think Facebook are really clever not just to become another one of those companies that gets bought by Yahoo! / Google / Microsoft / eBay.

I get the feeling that a lot of the Web 2.0 startups that have been sold to larger companies have become a little bit fusty. I no longer see the appeal in Flickr at all, and when was the last time you saw something new from del.icio.us?

I get the impression that for too many startups, their entire business model is based on crossing their fingers and hoping that Google buys them. I mean, where does Twitter get all its money from? Eh?

Facebook is ambitious, and it’s willing to stand on its own two feet. That’s really admirable. And while I’m not an expert in either technology or betting, who is to say that Facebook won’t be one of the web’s very biggest companies in a couple of years time?

Update: Forgot to include a link to this post from a former social networks-skeptic who has joined Facebook.

Update: Would usually del.icio.us this, but it is quite salient to this post, so: Wisdump: The Ebb and Flow of Social Networking.

In the meantime, I have some thoughts on Facebook, which seems to have become a phenomenon over the past couple of months. Two or three months back it seemed to reach a tipping point. It is now no longer the preserve or procrastinating students.

Now Facebook seems to have made itself the social network to be on for sensible grown-up types. I heard it mentioned on the 6 O’Clock News recently — and that really is a sign, I think (have you ever heard LiveJournal (except in the context of “suicidal mad gunman had a LiveJournal”) or even Flickr mentioned on the news?).

It is easy to see why Facebook attracts that kind of audience. MySpace and Bebo are a full-on assault on the eyes (and sometimes ears), not to mention near enough impossible to navigate sensibly. Facebook has your profile in a pleasant blue interface which has a sensible, easy-to-use navigation system. Tweenagers may cry because they can’t put stupid pink glittery things on their profiles — but the rest of us are rejoicing.

But Facebook are not resting on the laurels of their new-found mega-popularity. Because it seems to me as though, of all the social networks out there, Facebook is the only one that does much in the way of innovation — and it does it by the bucketload.

When Facebook opened its doors to everyone, its current members (ie. students) were up in arms. But it turned out to be the key to the site’s eventual popularity.

When Facebook introduced its news feeds, people shrieked about the privacy concerns. But that was a storm in a teacup if ever there was one, because Bebo has subsequently made a weak copy of it without anyone batting an eyelid.

Also, the “privacy concern” completely ignored the fact that Facebook has awesome privacy features that I have never seen anywhere else. For a start, your profile is completely private to anyone outside your “network” (ie. university or geographical region). Then it can be private to people even inside your network. And then you can even have a “limited profile” so that you can even choose which of your friends has access to which information.

In fact, I feel so safe on Facebook that it is the only place on the web where I have ever posted my phone number. Many others even put their address on Facebook, and it doesn’t feel like a concern. Could you imagine putting your postal address on MySpace? I hardly think so.

Facebook’s latest rabbit out of the hat is its brilliant Facebook Platform, and Facebook Apps. They’re a bit like widgets of the sort that you can find on MySpace and Bebo — but really smartly done.

MySpace is famously annoying for having profiles with a million songs and videos autoplaying. Facebook has very cleverly prevented this from happening by requiring visitors to click before anything annoying happens (and then it’s your own fault damnit!). Just in the same way as Facebook has stopped users from having colour schemes that are like daggers in your eyes, they have sensibly taken precautions to make widgets not get in your way.

Once the initial excitement about Facebook Apps died down, I became a bit worried that Facebook would become a bit like MySpace, with annoying widgets in your face everywhere. But now I have no such concerns. I know I will still be able to visit a profile without being confronted by ugliness (I don’t mean the profile pics, BTW).

The other clever thing that Facebook have done is opening up widgets to everyone. On Bebo, the choice of widgets is really weak. If you really love dodgy Flash photo slideshows, you will love Bebo widgets. But anything apart from that? No luck. This is no doubt because, rather bureaucratically (although understandably, given security concerns there might be), Bebo only allows widgets with “approved partners”.

Yet, Facebook has developed a secure “platform” that allows me to embed my information from other websites like Twitter, del.icio.us and (belatedly) Last.fm. In the space of a week, I have not got everything I’ve wanted Facebook allow me to put on my profile.

A bit bizarrely, Facebook gave websites of arse drizzle prominence over Last.fm, who were not given advance notice of the Facebook Platform. Meanwhile, iLike was. Unfortunately, iLike is the most popular Facebook app at the moment. Everytime I see that “one of my friends has added iLike”, I think of this.

Inexplicably, Mog was also given advance notice. Mog is like Last.fm, but it does everything in a much less efficient and more invasive way. And it’s brown.

Anyway, despite the fact that I was unable to put Last.fm on my profile straight away, there is no doubt that Facebook have already set the standard when it comes to widgets — mostly because they have managed to make it so that it isn’t annoying. Widgets are hardly revolutionary. But Facebook have implemented them with such class that it feels revolutionary.

I suppose Facebook also deserve kudos for calling them “applications” rather than the literally meaningless “widgets” (or, even worse, “gadgets” on Windows Vista). Mind you, this is because Facebook say that their applications are more fully-featured that standard widgets anyway, because they integrate into the social graph, whatever that is.

I see it, because the Last.fm application lets me compare my music profile to that of others on Facebook who also use the Last.fm app. Apparently RSSbook shows you what RSS feeds your friends are subscribed to, and suggests feeds that might interest you based on that information.

It is not quite perfect. I would like my Twitter status to automatically become my Facebook status. I would prefer my del.icio.us links to be imported into my “posted items”. But I can understand why they have not allowed this.

All-in-all, sitting here today, it is difficult to see why anyone would want to sign up to a social network that isn’t Facebook. I’ll have more on this in my next post (because this one is already long enough).

Update: Part two has been posted here.

Gore has given the series of concerts the oh-so-imaginative name Live Earth. Wait a minute that sounds like a Microsoft product. Wait a minute — it is! Shit me!

Hopefully this will knock Geldof off his perch a bit. Back when there was all that Live 8 nonsense I wrote plenty of stuff about the offensiveness of Geldof, a man who unashamedly makes a living out of starving Africans.

He is not content with giving an undue platform to bland rockstars who don’t have the faintest clue about politics or economics and bollocksing up his purported goals in the process. Geldof has also allowed his offensive sperm to turn into Peaches Geldof. I had my suspicions before, but now I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Bob Geldof is the most evil man on the planet.

As such, I hope Gore’s big concert puts a massive dent in Geldof’s ego. The problem is that Geldof will only be replaced by Gore on the “Massive Arsehole” league table. Soon, Geldof will strike back with his own massive concert, then Gore will hold another huge concert. Then Bono will come along and throw his weight behind the creation of a carbon neutral™ Benevolence Android™, thereby gazumping them both.

Despite the fact that Bono is firmly in third place on the Massive Arsehole league table, he might have the right idea with this carbon neutral™ Benevolence Android™. After all, it is surely true that a great deal of climate change is caused by the hot air emitted from the Geldof / Gore axis of ego. And that is without taking account of the guitar-wielding windbags that they place on their foreheads that are cleverly disguised as stages.

Of course, the biggest problem with holding massive concerts is that they actually use up shedloads of energy. After all, they involve the use of massive fucking speakers and sophisticated lighting systems — real energy guzzlers. And then there is the small matter of the transport involved to get everyone there.

Gore claims that the concerts will be carbon neutral, but this is a bit hollow. After all, they could plant the trees anyway, without holding a concert. That would probably do much more good. But then we wouldn’t be able to have a giant party then, would we? Diddums.

My biggest problem with this concert proposal though is the fact that it is designed to “raise awareness” of the climate change issue. But has Gore not seen the news recently? Every fucker on the planet already knows about climate change. You could not possibly raise awareness of climate change! It is already the most talked-about issue on the planet!

In other words, this concert will achieve absolutely zip. If anything, it will have a generally negative effect — just like Live 8. Well done Mr Gore! Do the world a favour and stick to what you’re good at — losing presidential elections.

Gary Andrews is similarly unimpressed.

There are some other cool gadgets that I’ve installed. Multimeter is a gadget that is just like the Microsoft gadget that tells you CPU and RAM usage, but it uses bar charts rather than antiquated dials.

iTunes Accessory is a very nifty gadget that displays what is currently playing in iTunes. It allows you to skip tracks, pause, mute and suchlike. So now I don’t need to keep fidgeting with windows just to pause a track. Nice.

I’ve not kept it on my sidebar because I don’t post packages very often. But if you do, I think Postage Calculator (UK) is very impressive. If you haven’t got your head around the Royal Mail’s new pricing system, just plug in the weight and size of your package and this will tell you how much it will cost to send. Simple but brilliant.

But this is the one that has really bowled me over. BBC Radio Player allows you to listen to any of the national BBC Radio stations (including digital stations, naturally) without the hassle of firing up your browser and trudging through the BBC website. Such a simple interface as well, and it works perfectly.

What I’d quite like to see is a Meebo gadget. I love the idea of Meebo, but I don’t like it taking up a tab in Firefox.

The upshot of it is that I’ve got a computer that’s slightly ridiculous. Here’s how it happened. It was the cheapest one on Dell’s website. The choice of speakers was either two really crummy looking ones that looked like they would disintegrate if you touched them; or a ridiculous 5.1 system. 5.1 system it is then. Bwoom.

I also misjudged the size of the monitor. I guessed that 19″ would have been just about the same as the old monitor I used, just a bit wider. Maybe it is, but it’s too bright or something. I’ve even turned the brightness down, and I’ve moved the whole lot to a desk that lets me sit further away from the monitor, and I’m still squinting a bit and getting a bit of a headache.

Also, all of these lines of text are now ridiculously wide. This is making it difficult for me to judge how big these paragraphs are, which is probably why they are all bigger than normal. I guess I should just resize my browser window, but I’ve always liked to have everything maximised.

Anyway, that’s all boring. The purpose of this post is to talk about the gadgets (widgets to you and me) that come with Vista by default. I mean, they are all potentially useful, but some of them seem to fall short of their potential. Take the calendar gadget for instance. As far as I’ve been able to work out all it does is show you today’s date and then it shows you a little calendar of all the dates in the known universe.

Flick over to the start menu and you find an application called Windows Calendar. Nice! Does it sync with the calendar gadget? Not as far as I can tell. So right now I’ve got a calendar in my sidebar, but I can’t put any events on it. In other words, it’s a bit useless.

Then there is the weather gadget. Yes, it knows that Kirkcaldy exists! Result. Er, but hang on. Can I not get this to give me a weather forecast? Apparently not. It can only tell me what the weather is right now. I could really just look out the window to get the same information this has given me. More than anything else, it serves as a permanent reminder that I probably should really be outside and not sitting indoors getting pale in front of a computer. But I bought Vista as soon as it released ferchrissakes. This is like McDonald’s asking me to go swimming before I eat a Big Mac.

I know that you can download other gadgets and that better ones are bound to come out soon enough. But I really wonder why they bothered. Both of these are potentially very useful gadgets, but they lack any functionality whatsoever.

Normal blogging will resume soon! Possibly.

Update: I forgot about the RSS gadget, which would be really good — if you could choose an RSS feed that wasn’t from MSN!